Search for Meaning

Curiosity is part of the human condition. Searching is an action of curiosity – “What’s over the next rise?” or “Beyond the next curve of the path deep into the forest?” Curiosity and searching are the exciting facets built for the thrill of learning. Meaning is derived from learning and beliefs. Beliefs are a complex structure that shapes reality (see https://psychesweather.wordpress.com/2016/01/04/the-other-invisible-beliefs/ )

The idea of separating meaning from our selves may be a game that our egos play that could help to promote learning via the locomotion provided in a journey. Since I am positing that our brains project reality out into the world then meaning is projected “out there” too.

Let’s take a step back for a moment. A child learns language from parents / adults and model their behaviors based on these adults both what they say and what they do. The child’s personality develops through socialization with other children and adults through the structures of school, play and family. The young adult begins to have ideas of their own but only in as much as these ideas a generated in a context of socialization. Perception is trained through the development of ego based on language (written, verbal and non-verbal) and its structures, which through further extrapolation becomes a complex society and civilization that becomes reality.

Okay – back to meaning. Our egos follow whims and are drawn by a curiosity impulse to follow whatever is presented in the field of attention. Some of this could be considered play and some titillation or both. Even if one decides what is the meaning of life a search ensues to uncover the facets to support that meaning. So there is a constant projection game underway.

When I worked as an experimental filmmaker I did a piece for a group of artists / sculptors called “A Rock Video”. It was a group of four artists making sculptures from rocks from a dried stream-bed. They piled rocks on top of each other making towers and bridges without any adhesive connecting glue. I cut the piece to their liking – about twenty minutes. I contacted a woman’s drumming group to do the score. One of the sculptors decided he was going to tell the women how to score the piece, wanting them to do a beat when a rock landed. I told him it was a mistake and would never work. But it was tried anyway and it didn’t work. I asked the leader of the group to watch the video with her group and improv to it. When I showed the final piece the artist who was convinced that it was going to be a disaster was amazed.

“How did you do that?”

“I didn’t your brain made it work.”

Any piece of music match to any film our brains make sense of it. For example if you lay the music of “Psycho” over the part of “The Wizard of Oz” when they emerge from the forest and see the Emerald City for the first time. It becomes a different movie but it works because our minds project meaning and structure all the time. You could try this at home.

We make reality.

This article was prompted from Facebook and the offering of quizzes testing things like – “What Native American tribe are you from?” “What country are you a citizen of?” and other questions indicative of the reality projection parameters. These amusing distractions and the rate we play them may be indicative of a collective shame of being Americans under a dictatorial rule circa 2017 or not.